List of Oz books


The Oz books form a book series that begins with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and relate the fictional history of the Land of Oz. Oz was created by author L. Frank Baum, who went on to write fourteen full-length Oz books. All of the Baum written books are in the public domain in the United States. Even while he was alive, Baum was styled as "the Royal Historian of Oz" to emphasize the concept that Oz is an actual place. The illusion created was that characters such as Dorothy and Princess Ozma related their adventures in Oz to Baum themselves, by means of wireless telegraph.

The original Oz books by L. Frank Baum

Story compilations and other works by Baum

In addition to the canonical Oz books, several of Baum's works that are not Oz stories are nevertheless nominally set in the same fictional universe as the Oz books, and include several character crossovers. These are:
Queen Zixi of Ix, The Magical Monarch of Mo, The Sea Fairies, Sky Island, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, and John Dough and the Cherub.

Plays by Baum

Baum also wrote Oz-related stage plays: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with music by Paul Tietjens and Nathaniel D. Mann, The Wizard of Oz , The Woggle-Bug with music by Frederick Chapin, The Rainbow's Daughter, or The Magnet of Love with music by Manuel Klein, revised in April 1909 as Ozma of Oz, and ultimately produced, with music by Louis F. Gottschalk as The Tik-Tok Man of Oz. Also in 1909, he wrote a play called The Girl from Oz. The manuscript is held in the archives at Syracuse University, but apparently its relation to Oz is little more than nominal, as is also the case with the short story, "The Littlest Giant", a rather brutal tale designated in two lines to be in the Gillikin country of Oz. With Gottschalk writing the music, he wrote an unproduced stage version of The Patchwork Girl of Oz in November 1913, that was developed into the film scenario.

Subsequent Oz books by other writers

The Oz books that were written subsequent to Baum's death can be classified into three categories:
The Oz books of Sherwood Smith, published in 2005 and 2006, are officially recognized as canon by The Baum Trust. The first two books were published professionally, with the third book published though lulu.com in 2014.

Subsequent books by other writers published by Reilly & Lee

Ruth Plumly Thompson's style was markedly different from Baum's. Her tales harked back to more traditional fairy tales. She often included a small kingdom, with a prince or princess who saves his or her kingdom and regains the throne or saves Oz from invasion. Thompson even respelled Baum's respelling "Nome" as the more traditional "Gnome".
Illustrator John R. Neill's vision of Oz is more manic than Thompson or Baum's. Houses often get up and do battle, and everything can be alive. His entries take Oz's color scheme to an extreme, extending it to sky and skin colors.
Jack Snow was a Baum scholar, and even offered to take over the series at age twelve when Baum died. Snow's books lack any characters created by Thompson or Neill, although he did create his own.
The last two Oz books published by Reilly & Lee:

Subsequent books published by the International Wizard of Oz Club

Other books officially recognized as canon by The L. Frank Baum Family Trust

Additional books by the earlier writers

wrote Who's Who in Oz, a guide to characters from the first 39 Oz books, as well as a short story titled "A Murder in Oz," in which Tip takes his life back from Ozma, and both are ultimately restored as twin siblings.

Oz books by other writers

Some are in line with the originals, while others deviate in various ways.

Alternate Oz books

Below are some books which deal with alternate versions of Oz, that do not follow the canon established by L. Frank Baum.
TitleWriterYearNotes
The Laughing Dragon of OzFrank Joslyn Baum1934A "Big Little Book" written by Baum's son and published by Whitman Publishing. It has none of the characters from the official Oz books, though briefly mentions the Wizard. Whitman quickly withdrew it after a lawsuit threat from Reilly & Lee.
The Wizard of the Emerald CityAlexander Volkov1939, 1959Volkov's original adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. Ellie, 9, and her puppy Totoshka are carried in a hurricane to the Magic Land. After the first shock of the beauty of the land and Totoshka's sudden gift of wise speech, they meet the Fairy of the Yellow Land, Villina, who tells them that she has allowed their house to be taken by the wind to land on the head of Gingema, the Wicked Witch of the Blue Land, and kill her. Now Ellie is called "The Fairy of the Killing House" and is worshipped by the people around. Villina tells Ellie to follow the Yellow Brick Road to find Goodwin, the Great and the Horrible, the ruler of the Magic Land, who lives in the Emerald City. He is supposed to bring Ellie back home to her parents if she fulfills the greatest wishes of three creatures that she will meet on the way. They set off, Ellie wearing the silver shoes that Totoshka has found in Gingema's house. They meet Strashila the scarecrow, who dreams of having a brain, The Iron Woodman, who dreams of a heart, and the Cowardly Lion, who dreams about courage. This novel is nearly the same as the original, with a few changes and additions.
Urfin Dzhus and His Wooden SoldiersAlexander Volkov1963The first of Volkov's sequels, all of which have nearly nothing to do with Baum's. In this one, set one year after the events in the first novel, Urfin Dzhus, a former servant of Gingema, discovers a magical powder that brings things to life. He then creates an army of wooden soldiers and sets off to conquer the Magic Land. On her farm in Kansas, Ellie meets a crow bearing a pictured message: Strashila and The Iron Woodman behind bars. Ellie and her uncle, the wooden-legged seaman Charlie Black, set off through the desert and the mountains to help their friends.
Seven Kings of the UndergroundAlexander Volkov1964Trapped in a huge cave after a collapse, Ellie, now 11, Totoshka and Ellie's cousin Fred are forced to move further into the cave. They end up in the underground of the Magic Land, in the Land of the Seven Kings of the Underground, which is currently caught up in a serious political crisis. The people recognize Ellie as the Fairy of the Killing House and keep her hostage, forcing her to use her magical powers to restore the Magical Spring of Sleepy Water that keeps the order in the country. It is up to Fred now to find a way out to seek help from Ellie's friends.
The Yellow FogAlexander Volkov1970A giant witch named Arachna wakes up after a 5,000 years' sleep. She wishes to rule the Magic Land, but seeing that the people would not surrender, sends on them an eerie Yellow Fog that threatens to bring eternal winter and poison all the people, eventually causing mass death and destruction. The people of the Magic Land Once seal rooms to hide inside and use the leaves of a certain tree as gas masks, but this cannot last forever. Annie, Ellie's younger sister, her friend Tim, and Artoshka, Totoshka's grandson, accompanied by Charlie Black, rush to the rescue. Charlie builds a giant piloted robot who defeats the witch.
The Secret of the Abandoned CastleAlexander Volkov1976, 1982This time the people of the Magic Land have to deal with an alien invasion. The inseparable Annie and Tim, now 12 and 13, along with Fred the engineer, arrive to help their friends. They discover that the aliens are not united: some of them, the Arzaks, are enslaved to the Menvits through their hypnotic eyes. The guests from the Outer World discover that the Magic Land may hold the key to the Arzaks' freedom.
A Barnstormer in OzPhilip José Farmer1982Set approximately 30 years after the events of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the protagonist of this novel is Hank Stover, the son of Dorothy Gale Stover. After his plane is lost in a mysterious green cloud, Hank finds himself in an Oz on the brink of a civil war. The novel states that the events of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz are based on real events. Baum had been a newspaper reporter in Nebraska around the time Dorothy was transported to Oz; he interviewed her and later used his notes as the basis for the first novel. All subsequent novels by Baum are solely products of his imagination.
Return to OzJoan D. Vinge1985The book version of the movie Return to Oz, which is based on the second and third books, The Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz.
Dorothy of OzRoger S. Baum1989The author is L. Frank Baum's great grandson. In this story, Dorothy and Toto return to the Land of Oz when it is under attack by a Jester using the wand of the Wicked Witch of the West. Besides help from Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion, Dorothy gets help in her quest by a China Doll Princess, Tugg, and Wiser the Owl. The 2014 film ' is partially inspired by Dorothy of Oz.
WasGeoff Ryman1992Was employs the literary conceit that a Kansas girl named Dorothy existed and that, as a school teacher, L. Frank Baum made up the story of the first Oz book to amuse her. The novel takes place in the real world.
'Gregory Maguire1995Published by ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins. It is a parallel novel written by Gregory Maguire and illustrated by Douglas Smith. Based upon the writings of L. Frank Baum, it is a revisionist look at the land and characters of Oz, drawing primarily from Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.
The novel presents events, characters and situations from Baum's books and the film in new ways, with several differences between the L. Frank Baum series and the Wicked Cycle. These differences arise from the original Oz functioning as a mirror-image of Kansas in a cultural and economic framework: Oz was wealthy, prosperous and had excellent agricultural yields while Kansas was characterized by economic hardship, environmental difficulties and poor harvests. The social strife described in the Wicked Cycle indicates that the two series are set in similar and internally consistent but distinctly separate visions of Oz.
The novel focuses on the life of the Wicked Witch of the West, whom Maguire gives the name Elphaba.
Unlike the popular 1939 movie and Baum's writings, this novel is not directed at children, and contains adult language and content.
It is the basis for the Broadway musical Wicked by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman.
Lion of Oz and the Badge of CourageRoger S. Baum1995
Stephen King1997The characters visit an unpopulated version of the Emerald City, called the Green Palace. The Palace is a combination of the versions from the 1939 film and the book, pulled from the protagonists' imaginations. The man sitting on the Wizard's throne turns out to be Marten Broadcloak, an alter-ego of one of the Dark Tower Series' main villains.
Visitors from OzMartin Gardner1998Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman use a Klein bottle to travel to New York City in 1998. Gardner's whimsical fantasy includes various characters from the Oz books as well as ancient Greek gods and characters from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Son of a WitchGregory Maguire2005Published by ReganBooks. Sequel to Wicked, focusing on Elphaba's son Liir.
A Lion Among MenGregory Maguire2008Published by William Morrow Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. The third book in "The Wicked Years", telling the life story of the Cowardly Lion.
Out of OzGregory Maguire2011Published by William Morrow Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. The fourth and final volume in "The Wicked Years", focusing on the life of Rain, daughter of Liir and granddaughter of Elphaba. The story also includes Dorothy's return to Oz, as well as the appearance of Tip and Mombi from The Marvelous Land of Oz.
Oz Squad: March of the Tin SoldiersSteve Ahlquist2011This novel takes place a few years after the end of the Oz Squad comic book series. The Squad rushes to foil a plot by Rebecca Eastwitch to enslave both Earth and Oz using the secrets of a grimoire stolen from the Library of Hell.
The Oz Saga: The City of EmeraldsLandon Parks2013The first book in the series finds Dorothy struggling with dreams from her past visit to Oz. After finding a locket in the woods, she starts to feel that perhaps finding it was not as much of a coincidence as she thought. After being torn back into the kingdom of Oz, she finds that the magical kingdom is no longer the great, fabled fairy-country it was on her past visit. Published by Griffin Young Readers. First book in the middle grade series 'The Oz Saga'
Return to "Return to Oz", and Other TalesJustin MacCormack2014The collection of horror and dark fantasy stories including the titular story, themed around a man rediscovering his past and coming to terms with the disturbing moments he has experienced, set against the nostalgic memory of the film "Return to Oz".
A Taste of OzRobin Blasberg2020In this parody, published by YouthPLAYS, Dorothy seeks out the Wizard to escape from Oz. But does Toto have other plans? Heads will roll with laughter at the calamity that ensues.